“You got anybody interesting?” she asked.
I wanted to tell her that was a dumb question. This wasn’t a talent search. Alicia had been trained as a nurse at Good Samaritan in Selma. She was pretty in a plain way, and there was a ready smile beneath her features. At one point, Mrs. Seager had asked, What do you find so funny, Miss Downs? and Alicia had answered, Nothing, ma’am. I just felt a sneeze coming on. Then her face had gone dull and blank. Mrs. Seager glared at her for a moment before continuing with her instructions on how to properly clean a bathroom toilet in a medical facility.
“Not really.” I didn’t know how much I was allowed to reveal about my cases. Mrs. Seager hadn’t said much of anything about privacy. “Two school-age girls on birth control shots.”
“Well, I’ve got a woman with six kids.”
“Six?”
“You heard right.”
“Well, you better make it over there quick before it’s seven.”
“You got that right. Well, I’ll be seeing you.” Alicia waved to me and I waved back.
I’ll be honest and tell you there was a time I was uppity. I’m not going to lie about that. My daddy raised me with a certain kind of pride. We lived on Centennial Hill, down the road from Alabama State, and all my life I’d been surrounded by educated people. Our arrogance was a shield against the kind of disdain that did not have the capacity to even conceive of Black intellect. We discussed Fanon and Baldwin at dinner, debated Du Bois and Washington, spoke admiringly of Angela Davis. When somebody Black like Sammy Davis Jr. came on TV, it was cause for a family gathering.
But from the very first day I met Alicia, she ignored my airs and opened up to me. As I watched her walk away, I knew we would be fast friends.
I’d parked a block and a half away on Holcombe Street to hide my car. Daddy had given me a brand-new Dodge Colt as a graduation gift, and I was shy about anyone at the clinic seeing it. Most of the nurses took the bus. Mrs. Seager had assigned me two sisters way out in the sticks because she knew I had a reliable set of wheels.
“Civil?”
Oh Lord, what did she want now? I turned to face Mrs. Seager.
“Might I have a word?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She went back inside the building and let the screen door slam shut behind her. A gust of warm air swirled around me. I could swear that woman surged fire when she spoke. There had been scary professors at Tuskegee, so she wasn’t the first dragon I’d met. Professor Boyd had told us if we were so much as two minutes late, he would mark down our grades. Professor McKinney divided the class between women and men and dared us to even think about glancing over to the other side. That kind of meanness I could handle. The thing that bothered me about Mrs. Seager was that I always had the sense I could mess up without knowing how.
Inside the building, the reception desk was empty. I positioned my cap and smoothed the front of my dress before knocking on her door. She had taken the trouble to not only go back into her office but to close the door behind her.
“Come in,” she called.
The clinic had formerly been a three-bedroom house. She’d converted the smallest bedroom into her office. The other two were examination rooms. The old kitchen was now a break room for staff, the living and dining spaces served as a reception and waiting area. From the back of the building we could hear the roar of the new highway behind us.
Bookshelves lined one side of Mrs. Seager’s office, file cabinets the other. On the wall behind her desk hung at least a dozen community awards. Salvation Army “Others” Award. Junior League Lifetime Member. The surfaces were clutter-free. On top of the desk sat a cup of pencils, the sharpened points turned up. She cradled a file in her hands.
“Sit down.”
“Yes, Mrs. Seager.” I took a seat. The window was open and a sparrow was chirping insistently.
“I understand your father is a doctor in town.”
I could now see that she was holding my employment file. When I tried to speak, I coughed instead.
“Are you sick?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Because in our profession we have to maintain our own health in order to help other people. You must rest and eat properly at all times.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Very well. So your father is a doctor.” She said this as a matter of fact.
I knew what she was about to say. The same thing my professors at Tuskegee had lectured when they discovered my father and grandfather were doctors. Your marks are impressive. Of course, as a woman, you have other issues to consider. Starting a family, for instance. You have wisely chosen the nursing profession, Miss Townsend. I never knew what to say when they sounded off like that. The beginnings of a compliment always ended up stinging like an insult. Usually, I mumbled something incoherent and wondered if I was just being too sensitive.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We have been sanctioned by the federal government to execute our duties. We must take our mission very seriously. A wheel cannot work without its spokes. We are the spokes of that wheel.”
Alicia was right. The woman’s hair didn’t budge.
“What I’m saying to you, Civil, is that you are a smart girl. It’s why I hired you. I have high expectations of you because I think you’ll make a fine nurse someday. I don’t want you to go getting ideas.”
She had just paid me a compliment, but it sounded strange in my ears. “Ideas about what, ma’am?”
She frowned and, for a moment, I worried that my tone had slipped into insolence. “About your place in all this. You have to work together with your fellow nurses. Our mission is to help poor people who cannot help themselves.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I sat quietly, digesting her words. My daddy had made sure that I was educated not only in my books but also, as he had once described it, in the code that dictated our lives in Alabama. Knowing when to keep your mouth shut. Picking your battles. Letting them think what they wanted because you weren’t going to change their minds about certain things. It was a tough lesson, but I’d heeded it well enough to get some of the things I wanted out of life. Like this job, for instance. The woman is just trying to pay you a compliment, Civil. Show her you can gracefully accept it.
“Yes, ma’am. I won’t disappoint you, Mrs. Seager.”
She nodded. “And Civil? Don’t forget to clip those fingernails.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I’d been called into the fold of the health profession as early as junior high school. Although my daddy wanted me to go to medical school, I’d always known nurses occupied an important space when it came to patients. Medicine was a land of hierarchy, and nurses were closer to the ground. I was going to help uplift the race, and this clinic job would be the perfect platform for it. Mrs. Seager could have been doing something else, but she had chosen to help young colored women. Her approval meant something to me. Our work would make a difference.
This was the way I figured it. There were all different kinds of ministers. Ministers of congregations. Ministers of music. To minister was to serve. This work was a ministry serving young Black women.
The wind tugged at my nurse’s cap. I walked quickly, and as soon as I was in the car, I unpinned the cap and took it off. I’m telling you, in those early days I was pretty sure I’d work at that clinic for as long as they’d have me. I had a new friend. A new job. A Tuskegee degree. I was sure enough ready.